In a computing environment, a search engine can be used to identify documents, such as webpages, related to user input search terms. A personal assistant system may be able process both spoken and textual queries, such as to a search engine, and help users with customized tasks, such as hotel booking or restaurant reservation. A natural language understanding can be unified with keyword query understanding for information retrieval and task completion applications. For example, given a spoken query “show me Gone with the Wind trailers” or simply a keyword query “Gone with the Wind trailers”, a system may be able to understand that the user's intent is to find trailers of the movie titled “Gone With the Wind”, and to take relevant actions accordingly, such as retrieving appropriate webpages, or directing the user to a location that shows the trailers.